


Maybe He Won't Notice

by natalexx



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-20
Updated: 2004-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:38:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalexx/pseuds/natalexx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who else can he turn to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe He Won't Notice

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Nightwing #98 in particular and a lot in general from the War Games arc. Thanks to dingogrrl.

Just when Dick was beginning to feel *really* melodramatic, Batgirl dropped down in front of him from the middle of the open skyline. "Need some help?" she asked, succinctly. He considered saying no.

"I was thinking this might be a nice way to go out, actually," he found himself saying.  
He cringed backward into his nice cozy spot on the fire escape. "Ignore me. Blood loss."

Batgirl gave him a strange look, or as strange as she could get across in a facial expression, through the shadows of that mesh mask. She tilted her head and reached down for him, hauling him back up.

He groaned, loudly, and said a few more things that simultaneously filtered away from his brain. Now was not a good time to be sleep deprived. He didn't want to see Leslie...or Bruce. Or Tim, or...Catalina, or...

"Be quiet, Nightwing," she said, effectively shutting up either his outloud voice or the one in his head, he couldn't remember, and it'd been a *long* time--he thought, probably--since he'd flown across Gotham on someone else's back. Did Bruce carry him like this? When he was a kid? Like a babe in arms. He smirked.

"Dick..." Batgirl didn't really call him by his first name very often. He let his head roll to the side so he could see her and realized he was laying down...he was in a cave. He felt his blood rush for a split second and tried to sit up. She caught him before he fell back down, and he realized how dizzy he felt. He closed his eyes and listened to his breaths. Deep, calm, deep, calm, steady, air to the brain but not too much. Steady, focus, stay calm.

He heard her voice. His whole head felt like a cloud, and it was weird. It wasn't a feeling he got very often. He'd experienced this as a kid, and oh he didn't want to think about *them*, but Nightwing always had a clear head. Nightwing. He felt a rush of nausea over his own name. "Cass?" he whispered.

Her hand touched his cheek. "I'm here."

Control the confusion, Dick. Control is how we survive "Where?"

"My room. I told Batman you're alright."

He hopes she means she told Babs. Because Batman would know now--he would get it out of Cass. He would know what to ask. Maybe. If he wasn't too busy with the war in Gotham. Maybe he didn't notice.

"Hope for too much what, Dick?"

"Uhh?" Dick swallowed. "I'm talking too much."

"You always talk too much."

That was nice. Dick almost felt a smile occuring on his lips. That was sort of...affectionate.

"You'll be okay if you stay still for a few days," Cass said.

"Yeah right," Dick said without even thinking about it.

"You need rest," Cass said, as though it wasn't an argument. Like maybe she'd sit on him to hold him down, except she couldn't do that--Batman needed her help.

"I'll ask him," she said. Maybe in response.

"No..." he sighed. Why bother protesting outloud. He could barely think in straight lines as it was.

++++++

He woke up, and he felt better. He thought, if he opened his eyes, he might be able to see things clearly.

He wasn't counting on it, though.

Cass knew he was conscious, somehow, and she was the first thing he could see. "Did I talk?" he asked seriously.

She smiled. She wasn't wearing her mask, but it was still a very ambiguous expression. "I have soup," she announced.

He tried to look quizzical. "Did you make it?"

"It comes in a can."

"That works."

She looked pleased. He smiled, felt it round the corners naturally, and he was pathetic for being so glad to do something so small and hardly noticed that didn't hurt anything.

She brought him the soup in a mug with a spoon, and it was lukewarm but she sat there by him while he drank the whole thing. When she took the dish back from him, she nodded like he'd accomplished something. He asked, "Shouldn't you get back out there? I'll stay put, I promise." He *didn't* promise, not really. He shouldn't have said that.

Her strangely heavy gaze might have said she didn't believe him, but he's not very good at reading her. Probably because she learned late in life that communicating was a *good* thing. "No...Batman said I should rest awhile," she said finally.

"He did?" He doesn't believe her. Batman knows the human body needs rest once in awhile, sure, but he doesn't *give* people time off. It doesn't happen. Unless he suspects something. Unless...he's angry. With Cass? With him? Why would he take Cass off duty unless he thought she was needed more to--what, guard Dick?

"You think too much," Cass told him.

He shook his head slowly. "I don't think so." If only *that* was his problem.

"It doesn't matter what you think," Cass went on, rather incongruously. "I'm staying here tonight."

He didn't argue anymore. It was only a few hours, after all. It must be almost sunrise already.

"Do you need to get up?" she asked, and it was taking him awhile to catch up.

"W-why?" he asked finally. He should check his own wound. Except he's certain Cass knows as much about bullets as he does.

Cass shrugged. "To pee?" She eyed him up and down, rather analytically. "I washed you off while you were sleeping, but you might be sticky under your clothes."

His hands instinctively went to verify what she said. He was naked to the waist, and she'd probably torn up his pants. He *did* feel dirty.

But he's felt like that since--well, Bludhaven.

"You're going to help?" he asked dubiously, looking up at her. She didn't hesitate to wrap her arms around his shoulders and help him up. Strange but he'd assumed she was averse to touch like everybody else. It didn't seem to bother her. It was almost like it wasn't weird at all.

"Batman sent something for you to work on, if you felt up to it."

Dick nodded. "Good."

"I can help," she went on. "If you show me how."

He smiled slightly. Knowing Bruce, it had something to do with chemistry. "Sure. College science coming right up."

Cass' bathroom was a total wreck. He actually remembered observing her messy habits before, but he'd never been up close and personal with her underwear. She had pink panties tucked behind the faucet on the sink pedestal, and she didn't even pick them up when she stopped and propped him up right in front. He couldn't seem to stop looking at them, while she was completely intent on getting the water temperature right. Weird girl.

Weird, but very cool. He wondered if he should ask her about Spoiler. He always considered Steph sort of a brat and left her up to Bruce and Tim, but he was beginning to realize she was more involved with these people than...actually, maybe more involved than *he* was, though that hadn't been his first thought. "I--" he swallowed. "You and Spoiler were friends, right? Are. Are friends?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

He reminded himself Cass was a girl of few words. "Do you want to talk about it?"

She glanced at him. "No. Nothing to talk about."

He blurted it out, "Do you think we should forgive her?"

She took his hand and didn't look back up at him. "I don't understand--that."

"Forgiveness?"

She was uncomfortable, now, he realized. "I don't understand...deciding to forgive."

She was scrubbing his nails. He swallowed. "Maybe you don't think it's your place to hold it against her?"

Cass frowned. "I don't like to be angry when people have done something. It's--done."

He bowed his head. "Yeah."

She turned him toward her and started unbuckling his pants. "Do you have something for me to wear?" he asked, with the idea he ought to be thinking ahead.

She didn't pause while she considered the question. "I think so," she said. "Barbara gave me a robe once."

He waited a moment for the joke, but it wasn't forthcoming. He raised his eyebrows. "Is it pink?"

She loosened the material around his hips. "How did you know?" she asked.

He rolled his eyes, and finally, she grinned. "I'll go get it." She paused. "I don't think you can get those off by yourself."

He braced himself and slowly looked down at the bandage around his right thigh. "Do you have scissors?"

"Wait." She touched him on the shoulder before she left him in the bathroom. He figured it could take her awhile to find anything out there, and that he'd better take care of himself while he had a chance. He just had to make it to the toilet. He could do that. His leg hurt a lot, when he put his weight on it. But he'd handled worse before. Except it seemed he's overestimated himself and he was going to fall down now before he could reach out and catch himself.

She came back before he expected. "I'll just--hold you up," she said, and maybe he'd managed to embarrass Batgirl a little. Her arms wrapped around his chest from behind and he stared down at her clasped fists until he could focus again. It felt a little weird, but it worked.

"Okay," he sighed, once he felt decent enough to play the chaste role model type again. "You can cut them off now."

She backed him up against the wall and he leaned. It was hard on his head. He didn't help her cut the pants away, but he had to talk again when she started sponging the exposed skin on his thigh. "You played doctor before?"

She gave him a look and didn't respond. He probably shouldn't act like she was too innocent to get it, when he didn't really know that she was. He sighed. "Thanks for...this, Cass."

"Of course." She smiled a little.

Oh, he had to say it. "Because we're...sort of...family?"

She straightened and went to the sink to rinse. He realized she was using something that looked a lot like underwear for a washcloth. If only he could move, he would be leaving now.

She looked back to him as she wrung them out. "Yes, I guess," she replied.

He tried to smile. "You guess?"

She came back to him and looked him in the face. He wished, sort of, that he hadn't pushed. He didn't know what he wanted to hear. He leaned, almost fell, forward--dropped his head and kissed her mouth.

It was harder going the other way. He just barely managed, and he thumped his head back when he found the wall again. "Hnngh." It was half wince and half apology.

She hadn't moved and when he met her eyes again he noticed how really pretty they were. They were big and brown and she said a lot with her eyes, it was just hard to translate.

She wasn't going to help him out, either. She ducked back down and kept cleaning up his legs.

He closed his eyes and tried to drift away. "Cass," he spoke when it didn't work. "I'm sorry." He can't even count all the people who would *really* kill him for hurting Cass. He shouldn't even be here. He can't trust himself not to destroy anybody he's around more than two minutes right now. Doesn't seem to matter who it is.

"You are hurt." She didn't sound upset. "It will get better."

He didn't say anything. It didn't feel right to agree with her, because it wasn't true. It was impossible. He opened his eyes and she just looked at him. "Okay," he said.

It was a lie.

She wrapped him up in the robe, which was in fact a brilliant shade of pink, almost fuchsia. She grinned at him and told him he looked cute in it. Then she settled him into an s-shaped lounge with his leg up by her desk set.

Batman had her set up with a computer, and Barbara had taught her the basic info it needed. Babs once remarked to him that Cass retained information at an amazing pace.

Bruce must like that.

"Is it still raining?" he asked. Being in her cave was like sensory deprivation. If he spent much time here, he would care less about a mess, too.

He guessed she had security cameras that could showed them the outside, and he was right. First light from sunrise was weakly filtering into the sky, illuminating yet another bleak and overhung day for Gotham.

"You should sleep more," Cass announced, and he saw he was under observation.

He shook his head. "No, I'm--I'm up. I'm fine. Let me see what Bruce wants."

But she stood up. "It's not right. You'll make yourself sick."

"I can *handle* it."

"I'll get you another blanket and turn down the lights."

He reached out and almost caught her by the arm as she marched by. She gracefully avoided his grasp. He slumped back on the seat. He couldn't sleep at the best of times, now. "I can't be sleeping when Bruce needs me," he explained when she came back. She tucked a pillow behind his head.

"I will wake you up," she simply replied. She didn't understand. "Does it hurt?" she asked, looking at his leg.

He shook his head. "It's fine." He hardly noticed the ache. She touched the robe at the hem and gingerly lifted it away.

"I should--check," she said, her forehead wrinkling. He looked down at the bandage, and it was hardly stained.

"It's not bleeding. Leave it alone."

He had other scars, and she was studying some of them. "Cass," he said, grabbing her attention.

She let the robe fall back over the bandage and met his eyes. "Yes?"

"I don't want--" he paused and floundered for a second. "I don't need a babysitter. If you need to, go. Or whatever. I can be left alone."

"But you don't *want* to be."

His head fell back to the pillow. "Damn, you know me too well."

She shook her head. "No, that's not it."

His gaze flickered. "Guess it's not."

She bit her lip in silence for a few moments. "This sucks," she eventually declared.

He raised his eyebrows. "It does?"

She leaned over him and took hold of the conversation. That was how the kissing felt, like the easiest talk he'd ever had. She was careful when she straddled him, never jostling his leg. And at first he was so grateful to be taken care of, he could hardly move himself.

"I've never done this," she said. He tensed up all over, and then gasped at the shooting pain it sent through his leg. She jumped back, holding herself off him and watching with concern. "You okay?"

"Yeah, fine, okay. Surprised. I'm not sure, Cass, that we should do this." He swallowed hard a few times. "It's just, I'm really not--you should have somebody special your first time."

She held him rapt in her gaze, following it like a line back down to where she'd left him, touching her lips to his. He thought it meant the end. It was better this way.

"You are special, Dick," she said softly. It hurt him. And she touched her lips to the side of his mouth, and to his cheek, and to the corner of his eye. It made him want her. He put his hands around her hips. She was so tiny. He could pick her up from this angle.

He was not *uninterested* in sex. Despite everything that had happened, he wasn't traumatized about the act itself. He'd always had a healthy respect for *this*, this moment of not thinking or strategizing or planning ahead. It never would have occurred to him, the idea of having sex with Cass. That's why it worked so well, like an out of body experience. He felt no pain. He had no doubts. For half an hour, it was all about her skin--the taste, a completely new taste; it was all about the way she could *move* and how much she was enjoying everything they did. Cass had no boundaries. And she soaked everything up with an instinct that had to be innate.

She gently shifted his thigh, making sure it was straight, making sure the bandage hadn't come undone. She smoothed her hand the opposite way, up his ribs, and kissed him as she settled herself against his intact side. He caught at her tongue in his mouth, lingering there. She sighed, slid down, tucked her head under his shoulder. She relaxed and he felt her go to sleep.

He was left alone again, forced into a view of just the ceiling. Sleep would be impossible, yet he didn't even want to think about moving. He'd fucked up *again*. He couldn't believe he was such an idiot.


End file.
